Well, I mentioned there might be some drama with my epidural steroid injection shot last week. Annnnnnd I was right. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Next time I make a prediction on this blog, I’m going to call that I come into a huge sum of money and get a book deal. Just watch.
Anywho, the injection itself went off without a hitch, though it wasn’t exactly pleasant. I was pretty sore for the first day or two afterwards, but was otherwise functional. But the next day after the shot at work, something funky began to happen. It felt as though I had a raging fever. My skin was on fire. My cheeks began to flush and I felt woozy. I tried to stick it out at work for the full day, but soon realized I needed to get myself home…fast.
By the time I got home, my face, neck, and chest were the color of a cherry bomb and I was running to the bathroom every five minutes. Nice visual, right? One panicked call to the doctor later and I discover:
I had a freaking allergic reaction to the shot.
Beautiful! Beautiful! Seriously, brava! I’m giving my luck a sarcastic standing ovation right now, since this was the one procedure I was counting on that could maybe maybe provide a little pain relief for my back. Instead, it confined me to my home for four days while I hugged the toilet and pressed a cold facecloth to my head.
I am thankful, of course, that in the grand scheme of allergic reactions, this one was not so bad. No hospital visit required, no shortness of breath, no swelling. Just a need to ship my child off to the in-laws for the second weekend in a row and to hole up in my living room with Netflix on a constant loop. Not that I minded the rest THAT much, but I miss my kid, I miss my office, and I miss wearing not pajamas.
The worst part of all of this is that I’m still feeling pain in my back. I’m supposed to give the medicine a full week to kick in, but I’ve only got two more days and all I can say is that so far it has taken the average daily pain from a 4 to a 3. It’s an improvement, but is it worth the days of hot cheeks…both on my face and elsewhere? The good money says naaaaah, not so much.
Sorry, steroids. You and me just don’t get along.
So where do I go from here? The old me might have collapsed into a downward spiral of shame and self-pity. The new me is going full The Secret. Good things will come. But it’s not about sitting and waiting for them to come to you. Good things come when you set out for them to happen. And if it doesn’t work, you just move on to try the next good thing.
So it’s onward in the search for better pain management! I think it’s time I go full hippy homeopathic, which my East Coast brain knows is a crock of shit, but my science brain recognizes that the mind is a powerful thing. If I just BELIEVE these things can help, then maybe, just maybe, they will.
But if they’re going to make me look like I fell asleep in the tropical sun for 12 hours with no sunscreen then….pass.
The Olive Gal
green of skin, black of heart
AAARRRGH. Ugh. That’s just dumb. The thing that’s supposed to help, actually hurt? Okay, sorry. Hold on:
*gets into The Secret mode*
You are going to find relief. Things are going to get better.
Hahaha. Exactly, Aussa. And I am starting to feel the teensiest, tiniest bit of relief in the back area (even though I look like a beet and am completely irregular in every way a person can be irregular). So there’s that! Power of positive thinking, amirite?!